Studying has become an exacting activity to many students through the years. For many parents, motivating their children to study means keeping track of them and always providing them with reinforcements (in the form of rewards) just to bring them to their study room. Some parents I know even pay their kids for every book they read. With so many distractions that take children away from their textbooks, such as computer gaming and mall hopping, finding ways to make studying a fun learning activity for them has indeed become a daunting task for many parents. There are ways to develop a child's good study habits. Here are some helpful ones.
Have a regular schedule for studying. One effective way of developing a child's studying habit is to have a regular time for studying, either before or after school hours. Try to determine the best time of the day for your child to study. Should it be in the morning or in the evening? Also try to find out how much time your child must spend in studying a subject. Depending on the needs of your child, the situation may vary but this must be done regularly for more effective results. Children easily develop a habit if an activity is done and repeated regularly. Studying is no exception.
Designate your child's hideaway for studying. It would be to your child's advantage if he/she is provided a specific place to go to every time he/she wants to study. It need not be a big place. A small room or a corner in the house will do for as long as it offers enough space and tranquility that is conducive for concentrating on the lessons for study. Create a secure, comfortable atmosphere by designing the place in ways that would advance clear thinking for positive learning. Too many fixtures may clutter up the room, so avoid these unnecessary room appendages. Instead, try fresh plants or flowers on a transparent glass vase, or an aquarium of colorful fishes. Either one may help stimulate the learner in a relaxing way. To complete the ambience, soft, mellow music should fill the air. Purely instrumental classical pieces are ideal for this purpose; none of those with lyrics, to keep your child's focus on what he/she is studying rather than on the background music. Check also the light in the study room - it must not be too dim nor too bright.
Understand your child's learning style. Get to know what makes learning easy for him/her. For example, is your child a sequential learner who learns through step-by-step process? Maybe he/she is a visual-spatial learner who needs to imagine the scenes in the story he/she is reading to understand it well. Or perhaps he/she needs to highlight or put color on the important key words in the learning module. Whatever your child's learning style is, it must work for him/her and must be cultivated. By the way, if your child gets to comprehend or memorize better while eating, allow him/her to have some snacks in the study room.
Help your child allot his/her study time. He/she only has so much time in a day to review his/her lessons and do all homeworks. Assist him/her in budgeting the study time wisely by finding out which among the subjects needs to be given more time for review. It may be the one he/she is not very good at, or the subject in which he/she gets low grades. Ask him/her to devote more time to these weaknesses.
Encourage your child to be creative. Your child should have fun learning. Studying need not be boring and onerous. Besides designing his/her study room, he/she can also make his study materials look attractive. For example, his/her notebooks can be made personalized with his/her own cover designs.
Give your child the much needed break. He/she gets tired too, you know. Some studies indicate that majority of students have a 25-minute attention span at the longest. If your child has to study for a longer period of time, let him/her take a 5-minute break for every 30 to 45 minutes of studying by doing some stretching or by relaxing the eyes. This will help your child clear his/her thoughts and put him/her in a better temperament to absorb more information.
It is not a bad idea at all for parents to give their children some rewards from time to time for studying well. This is positive reinforcement which can further help develop good study habits in your children. Have I mentioned my sister's reward scheme for her kid who's now in sixth grade? I probably can describe it best by saying here that her kid has consistently topped her classes since the first grade.
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Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.
(Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, On Philosophy of Education)
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